I’m not so sure this is accurate, the Romans certainly knew of China at least, to them it was called Serica, and they believed in a Manifest Destiny myth that they would one day conquer it.
Which would have been fukkin’ wild if it did play out, I think by that point the capital would have moved to Samarkand or somewhere else in Central Asia just to be able to maintain regulation over the silk road.
And Tacitus described a people he called Fenni in northeastern Europe, and it’s been conjectured that he could have meant one of the Finnic peoples around the continental side of the Baltic.
Yeah, it looks like the main evidence is that there’s a mention of a similar formation to testudo being seen in western China a couple decades later, and maybe some Roman-style fortifications. According to Wikipedia a large number of prisoners were sent to Merv somewhat nearby, so it’s all very suggestive, but definitely no smoking gun.
Yup. Not because they couldn’t, but because they figured they had enough boggy northern European territory, and would rather spend resources on Africa, Persia or the Middle East, which had nice things they wanted.
I’m not so sure this is accurate, the Romans certainly knew of China at least, to them it was called Serica, and they believed in a Manifest Destiny myth that they would one day conquer it.
Which would have been fukkin’ wild if it did play out, I think by that point the capital would have moved to Samarkand or somewhere else in Central Asia just to be able to maintain regulation over the silk road.
And Tacitus described a people he called Fenni in northeastern Europe, and it’s been conjectured that he could have meant one of the Finnic peoples around the continental side of the Baltic.
There was one legion that got lost in Persia and ended up working for the Chinese.Edit: Maybe, maybe not.
Crassus’ lost legion is just conjecture, there’s no convincing evidence. It’s a fun thought, though.
Is it? Oh, I didn’t realise. I’ll cross that out.
Yeah, it looks like the main evidence is that there’s a mention of a similar formation to testudo being seen in western China a couple decades later, and maybe some Roman-style fortifications. According to Wikipedia a large number of prisoners were sent to Merv somewhat nearby, so it’s all very suggestive, but definitely no smoking gun.
Thoughts like that make me wish I could travel through time, just watching history and see how different it would be if this or that happened.
Heck, just go back 20k years and you’ll see gobs of history we know nothing about.
They also never annexed Ireland.
Yup. Not because they couldn’t, but because they figured they had enough boggy northern European territory, and would rather spend resources on Africa, Persia or the Middle East, which had nice things they wanted.